And yet even as driven, independent, soulful women who know better, we can’t stop from SHOULDING all over ourselves at every opportunity.

We believe we should be thinner, richer, happier, kinder, more patient, more grateful, more “together”, more understanding, and of course, should be getting more things done.

Our thinking is that shoulds get us moving (though as driven women we’ve always had a fire under our ass) and that if we harass ourselves just enough we’ll finally do what we should do to be who we should be.

And yet what happens when a wave of shoulds rolls through?

We’re left flattened and feeling irritated, insecure, stuck and believing that nothing we ever do is good enough.

The more shoulds we adopt the more frantic we become, thinking we’re falling short, falling behind, and not living up to our full potential, which puts us on an endless hunt to prove our worth.

So how do we actually live up to our full potential without getting sucked into how and who we should be?